


somewhere in wichita

by softnow



Category: The X-Files
Genre: F/M, Fluff, Post-Detour, motel room bonding, post-cancer arc, season 5
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-30
Updated: 2018-07-30
Packaged: 2019-06-18 19:46:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,766
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15493317
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/softnow/pseuds/softnow
Summary: She comes to him with a calzone the size of her head, two bottles of beer, and a soft little knock on the connecting door like she thinks there’s a chance in hell he might not let her in.





	somewhere in wichita

**Author's Note:**

> written a few weeks ago for the prompt "things you said as we danced in our socks" on tumblr.
> 
> this was actually the very first msr fic idea i ever had, before any of my other works were even a grain of sand on the beach, so to speak, but i never got around to it for one reason or another until i got this prompt. but i'm glad it exists now, even if it took a while to get there.

She comes to him with a calzone the size of her head, two bottles of beer, and a soft little knock on the connecting door like she thinks there’s a chance in hell he might not let her in.

“I didn’t expect it to be so big,” she says when she offers him half. It’s mushrooms and olives, not his favorite, and he’s already eaten dinner—a chicken salad sandwich from the deli across the street that left a lot to be desired—but he doesn’t tell her that. If an overstuffed, oversized calzone is what it takes to get her into his room looking like this, all soft and sweet in worn out jeans and a too-big Quantico t-shirt, he’ll eat Italian for the rest of his life.

It’s a shitty motel, even for them. No table, no chairs, a TV that only picks up static and whiter static. He turns on the radio to drown out the hum and rattle of the air conditioner while she opens the beers. They sit cross-legged on the bed, knees brushing, the calzone in its grease-stained cardboard box balanced between them.

“Cheers,” he says and knocks the neck of her bottle with his. She smiles as she drinks.

It’s become something of a habit now.  _Consorting_ , as she said in Florida, when he was dumb and scared and left her to eat her cheese alone. He’d been wiser and braver the next time in Iowa when she showed up with two pieces of cheesecake and two paper cups of hot chocolate.  _Buy one, get one free at the bakery_ , she’d said. They ate their dessert at the foot of his bed and he’d tried to count her freckles, to make sure they were all still present and accounted for, just like her. Miraculously.

Since then, there have been other times. Lots of others. In Maryland, she knocked with two Cokes and a minibar-sized bottle of Jack Daniels she claimed to have found left behind in the drawer of her nightstand. In Ohio, it was a paper sack of hamburgers and canned beer, piss-poor stuff that they drank on the motel balcony, feeling for all the world like teenagers with nowhere else to be. And then there was his favorite: Tennessee, barbecue sandwiches wrapped in foil and styrofoam cups of iced tea so sweet his teeth had ached almost as much as his heart.

And every time she’s shown up with her excuses— _the vending machine gave me an extra_  or  _I’m not as hungry as I thought I was, want some?_ —he’s wanted to ask why. Why now, after years on the road, of carefully maintained professionalism, of no  _consorting_  has she decided to flout Bureau policy? But he hasn’t asked, partially because he’s afraid talking about it will break whatever spell she’s cast to convince herself it’s okay, and partially because he has a sneaking suspicion that he already knows. It’s the same reason people buy that new car or take the vacation they’ve always talked about after near-death experiences.

“So I was thinking about that substance we found at the house,” she says, after she’s managed to saw the calzone into two more or less equal halves with a plastic knife.

“The ectoplasm, you mean?”

She arches her brow and licks grease from her thumb. He wonders if she knows it makes his brain go a little fuzzy when she does that. He wonders if she does it on purpose.

“It’s not ectoplasm, Mulder. There’s no such thing as ectoplasm.”

“Sure there is.” He tears off a piece of dough from his half of the calzone and stuffs it in his mouth. It’s underdone and chewy. “We found it at the house today.”

“No, we didn’t. I think what we found was some sort of fungus. I won’t know for sure until we get the lab results back, but I was thinking that it might be a type of slime mold. A mutated one, maybe, but organic. Terrestrial.”

“In the shape of a man? You think some kind of mutated slime mold popped up in the shape of a man on Mr. and Mrs. Hartford’s kitchen floor a week after their son started showing signs of possession and  _one day_  after he disappeared?” He sips his beer and nudges her with his elbow. “C’mon, Scully. Think rationally for once.”

She scoffs and takes a bite out of her half. A string of mozzarella catches on her bottom lip and she swipes it away with her tongue.

“Like you’re mister rationality,” she says, and maybe she has a point, right now at least, as long as her tongue is making guest appearances.

“Well, I guess we’ll know tomorrow, then, won’t we?”

The corner of her mouth twitches. He knows what she’s thinking.  _I guess we’ll know I’m right tomorrow, then, won’t we?_  But all she says is, “I guess we will.”

They lapse into silence while Scully makes quick work of her half of the calzone and begins poaching mushrooms out of his. She can have them; she can have the whole damn thing if she wants it. He’s not hungry, but even if he were, the pleasure of seeing her actually eat is greater than eating himself. It’s been weeks, but the memory of her wan and pale, pushing hospital Jell-o around with a plastic spoon is still too close.

She startles him when she smacks his leg with enthusiastic little pats. Her mouth is half-full, but her eyes are excited. “Mm! Turn it up!”

He reaches for the knob on the radio, smiling when he recognizes the tune. “38 Special, Scully?”

“I haven’t heard this in  _forever_.”

There’s a faraway look in her eye and a little smile on her face. Wherever she is right now, it’s not a motel in Wichita. She looks young, beautiful.

“Fond memories?”

“Something like that.”

“Share with the class?”

She ducks her chin self-consciously and takes a sip of her beer. “The summer after I graduated high school, I went on a road trip with Melissa and some of her friends.” She glances up at him, her cheeks splashed with a tinge of pink. “I had a…bit of a thing for one of the boys.”

“ _No_ ,” he mock-gasps. “Doctor Scully had a  _crush_  on a  _boy_?”

She smacks him in the stomach with the back of her hand and he  _oof_ s dramatically for her benefit.

“You want the story or not?”

“Please,” he says. He’s not sure he’s ever wanted a story as badly as he wants this one. She never tells him things like this, things about her.

“We were in some crappy little town, staying in some crappy little motel—kind of like this one, actually—and everyone else had gone to bed, but we decided to go for a drive. No destination, just a drive. He had this cassette and—”

“Is this the part where you tell me you lost your virginity to Caught Up In You? How appropriate.”

“Mulder!” She jostles him with a hand on his shoulder, and for a second, he can see her, little eighteen-year-old Dana Scully with a crush on a boy, with her big blue eyes, with her healthy, chubby cheeks. “ _No_. Nothing like that. We just drove. He didn’t even hold my hand. But that night… That was the first time I ever thought, ‘okay. This is what it means to be alive.’ I don’t know. It’s silly.”

“It’s not silly.” He pushes the calzone box away and sets his beer on the nightstand before reaching to do the same with hers. “Come here.”

She eyes him warily as he stands and reaches for her. “What are you doing?”

“C’mere, Scully.”

“Mulder…”

“What? I’d take you for a drive, but all we do is drive. Come here.”

She lets him pull her off the bed and clasp her hand in his. When he tugs her in closer, she comes reluctantly. Her eyebrow rises as he begins to sway.

“What are we doing?”

“Dancing. Maybe you’ve heard of it?”

“This isn’t a slow song.”

“So?”

“I feel ridiculous.”

He slides a hand to her lower back and strokes her through her shirt. He can still feel her spine, could count the notches of her vertebrae if he wanted, but it’s not as pronounced as it was two months ago. She may feel ridiculous, but she doesn’t pull away.

“It has long been agreed upon that dancing is a testament to life,” he says. “It’s one of the great pleasures of existence. Like driving the backroads of some crappy town with the person you adore. It’s a celebration.”

“Really.” It’s not quite a question. She’s not quite so still.

“Mm.”

“And what are we celebrating?”

Her tiny hand flexes in his, squeezes a little firmer as she gazes up at him. She’s so short in her stocking feet. He’s been known to forget sometimes how small she really is, how fragile. He’s had enough reminders to last a lifetime.

“Don’t you know?” His tone is casual, a little teasing. He doesn’t know how to say what he wants to say.  _We’re celebrating what we celebrate every time you knock on my door with extra pizza or that pint of ice cream you simply can’t finish on your own or the bottle of wine that just happened to be accidentally sent to your room in this motel that doesn’t have room service. We’re celebrating you being alive, here, with me. We’re celebrating being together._

“Maybe I just wanted to hear you say it.” Her tone is a little teasing too, but there’s something beneath it. Something real.

He opens his mouth, closes it. Searches for words he can’t seem to find. She gives him an out and tucks her head beneath his chin, her ear right over his heart. His hand glides up her back to feel her own heart beating between her shoulder blades.

They stay like that for a long time, embracing and calling it dancing. The radio changes, Sammy Hagar replacing 38 Special and Foreigner replacing him. Her hair where it brushes his jaw is as soft as cornsilk. She smells like soap and spice and Scully, and she’s warm. So warm.

He thinks he must feel a little like she did in the passenger’s seat of that boy’s car in the middle of nowhere all those years ago when he buries his nose in the crown of her head and squeezes her a little tighter and thinks, this. This is what it means to be alive.


End file.
